Jaaved Jaffrey, the man who changed the face of dancing in India with the TV show “Boogie Woogie” is back with another agenda, “Documentary films”. Just as dancing was in the 90s treated as a mere past time and a hobby, documentary films also do not reach out to mainstream audiences. Jaffrey produced a national award winning documentary “Inshallah Kashmir”, which was banned by the Censor Board because of its sensitive content. When this happened, Jaffery took a decision that can only be taken by a producer with amazing panache, he decided to release the film online. Jaffery says, “The purpose of any documentary is to change the way we perceive life and ask the questions that everyone seems to be afraid to ask. With “Inshallah Kashmir”, we did just that. We presented the truth as it was. And when the film got banned by the censors, as a producer I had to take the step of releasing the film on YouTube because that was the purpose of the film after all, to tell the truth to the masses”.
Jaffery has co-founded the Indian Documentary Foundation together with Sophy V Sivaraman (http://www.indiandocumentaryfoundation.com/), a not-for-profit organization that provides a platform to make interesting documentaries in India and bring them out to the mainstream audience. The aim of IDF is promotion, development and funding of documentaries in India. Jaffery feels that documentaries are capable of bringing about a revolution in any country and the way in which documentaries are made is changing the world over.
He says, “Documentaries are now being made as interesting as a commercial film with all the elements such as narrative, plots, twists, comic elements, and the works. If you watch the IMDb page, a very interesting trend is emerging: documentaries are sharing space and vying for spots along with commercial films.I believe that documentary is a very elastic medium that has the ability to explore, investigate, reflect, reveal in a very creative way and IDF will become a significant center of social-conscience of our global village.”
As we speak, “The Act of Killing”, a documentary about the horrors of war is running in the theaters in U.S. My dream is to see this happening in India too, and that’s the reason for founding IDF”.
One of their initiative is bringing Goodpitch to India. Good Pitch offers a unique opportunity to create a coalition around each film. There is great potential to network and build partnerships around creative funding strategies, cause marketing, policy change, issue advocacy, and public engagement.
Goodpitch has successfully run its events in New York and Europe. For the first time, Goodpitch is happening to India through IDF and is open to entries: https://goodpitch.org/events/gpmb2013
